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November 25, 2002 |
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TIME Asia Magazine |
Japan's literati may sneer at Haruki Murakami, but his latest
novel has sold 460,000 copies in two months—and he's
revered overseas.
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War crimes, nationalism, teenagers, the World Cup, second-rate
writers, third-rate politicians: no matter what he's discussing,
Haruki Murakami appears strangely, almost disconcertingly
placid. During nearly three hours of conversation, emotion
flickers across the face of the most popular Japanese writer
since Yukio Mishima precisely once. After a wry put-down of
a rival novelist, his eyes sparkle with mischief and his lips
curl into a smile. But Murakami's words—both written
and spoken—are a different matter. Listen to them carefully
and you soon realize he is brimming with passion. As American
novelist Jay McInerney puts it, Murakami captures "the
common ache of the contemporary head and heart."
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In East Asia, his lyrical fictional style has spawned a legion
of imitators dubbed "Murakami's children." In South
Korea, where his books often hit best-seller lists, 50 volumes
of his work have appeared in translation, including novels,
short stories, travel pieces, essays and interviews. "Readers
develop empathy for Japanese of their age through Murakami's
books," writes Noriko Kayanuma, a professor of Japanese
literature at Choong Euk National University in South Korea.
"They realize that Japanese young people have similar
sentiments, worries and problems." In the West, too,
admiration is growing.
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"Is he the voice of our age?" asks Jay Rubin,
a professor of Japanese literature at Harvard University and
author of a recent Murakami biography. "Who knows? But
judging by the reactions of people from different cultures,
you can say his work has that great amorphous thing that makes
literature live."
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But writers, like prophets, are sometimes dishonored in their
own countries. So it is with Murakami. He is commercially
successful. That can be a curse in Japan, where the literati
distinguish condescendingly between "pure" literature
and fiction for the masses.
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continue reading at |
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http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine
/article/0,13673,501021125-391572,00.html |
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